Joseph A. Vitriol

Do we overemphasize the role of culture in the behavior of racial/ethnic minorities? Evidence of a cultural (mis)attribution bias in American psychology.

Although culture influences all human beings, there is an assumption in American psychology that culture matters more for members of certain groups. This article identifies and provides evidence of the cultural (mis)attribution bias: a tendency to overemphasize the role of culture in the behavior of racial/ethnic minorities, and to underemphasize it in the behavior of Whites. Two studies investigated the presence of this bias with an examination of a decade of peer reviewed research conducted in the United States (N = 434 articles), and an experiment and a survey with psychology professors in the United States (N = 361 psychologists). Archival analyses revealed differences in the composition of samples used in studies examining cultural or noncultural psychological phenomena. We also find evidence to suggest that psychologists in the United States favor cultural explanations over psychological explanations when considering the behavior and cognition of racial/ethnic minorities, whereas the opposite pattern emerged in reference to Whites. The scientific ramifications of this phenomenon, as well as alternatives to overcome it, are discussed in detail.

Racial Bias Increases False Identification of Black Suspects in Simultaneous Lineups

People are better able to correctly identify the faces of individuals who belong to their own race. Research linking the cross-race effect in face recognition to racial attitudes has been limited to explicit measures and sequential presentation formats. Using a simultaneous lineup task, our results from two studies revealed a systematic relationship between explicit racial bias and increased false identification of Black faces. We observed inconsistent evidence to suggest that individual differences in implicit attitudes impact judgments of Black faces. Nevertheless, nonconscious activation of crime-related concepts prior to encoding facial targets impaired White perceivers’ accuracy for Black faces. Nonconscious priming of crime concepts did not affect White perceivers’ judgments of White faces. Thus, among Whites, racial bias, as a function of both individual differences and contextual cues, can increase the false identification of Black faces in simultaneous lineups. Theoretical and legal implications for face recognition and eyewitness memory are discussed.

Conflicted but Aware: Emotional Ambivalence Buffers Defensive Responding to Implicit Bias Feedback

In the present article, we introduce emotional ambivalence - the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions – as a buffer against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback (IAT)...